CHAPTER 2: THE FAMILY TREE

With up to 25% of the Cambodian population died during the four years of the Khmer Rouge genocide period, no family in Cambodia was left untouched by the unspeakable terror. We lost my uncle, my mother's younger brother, and his entire family of five were taken away and executed at a mass grave, one of many killing fields. My father's younger brother's wife and her son died from malnutrition and disease. Both my grandmothers died of starvation. We are extremely fortunate to have survived the brutal genocide. With determination and perseverance, we were given a second chance to start a new life in America.

﻿After the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime, we embarked on a long and difficult journey that my parents would not have taken if it had not been for freedom and the opportunities for their children to live in a peaceful society that values and respects human rights. We arrived in America with nothing more than a few set of clothes. My parents worked tirelessly to provide and ensure their children would have a decent chance of a good life. Our successes were not without numerous struggles and challenges along the way. We had to adapt quickly and accelerate our learning to make up for the lack of childhood development stolen by the Khmer Rouge. Today my parents are proud of their successful adult children who have families of their own and lead meaningful and productive lives. Every one of us is a proud U.S. citizen of the United States of America. A family tree of my parents and siblings is illustrated below. ﻿﻿﻿

Family Tree

Christmas 2014 at David's home in Naperville, Illinois

Christmas 2015 with my older brother's family in San Jose, California

Christmas 2015 in San Francisco, California

We’ve great parents! It sounds like a cliché but we would not be here today without their determination, kindness, love, and incredible patience with each one of us during our journey to adulthood. They made life changing decisions throughout our struggle to reach the United States and always continue to support us throughout life's ups and downs. Our two and a half year journey by foot, after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, took us to a refugee camp in Thailand only to be forced into a secret repatriation tactic by the Thai government back to Cambodia, which was littered with landmines along the Cambodia-Thailand border areas. Once we reached Phnom Penh, the capital city of Cambodia on foot, my parents decided to make a second dangerous attempt to return to Thailand on foot, while most people including relatives decided to stay behind in Phnom Penh. My parents had always believed that a better life existed outside of war torn Cambodia. The second attempt was a success as we migrated from one refugee camp to another until we finally arrived in the United States on May 5, 1981. After one year into our settlement in the United States, our apartment was burglarized in a low income urban neighborhood in the Chicago area, and my parents made the difficult decision against the comfort of surrounding Cambodian community and financial burden, of moving the family to a better place in Evanston, Illinois. Evanston is a suburban city located approximately 15 miles north of Chicago and is home to Northwestern University, one of the country's most well respected colleges. This allowed their children to attend better schools and a chance to integrate into the American culture.

My parents were born in Cambodia in the 1940s and 1950s from Chinese immigrant families. Aside from my parents, none of us knew how to read and write in Khmer, which is the language of Cambodia. This is because none of us had the opportunity to learn in school. My parents came from middle class families. My father was the middle child of three siblings with an older sister and a younger brother. My father was sixteen years old when his father became very ill. In Asian culture, the oldest son usually had to step-up and take care of the family. To continue supporting his parents and siblings, he had to quit school and took up a full-time job as a salesperson in a chemical distribution company. He worked his way up and by twenty-one years old, he was the top salesperson in his company. He saw an opportunity to branch out and took the risk of starting his own competing chemical distribution company. By twenty-four years old, his company was very successful, and he married my mother after dating her for several years. We had a car, which at the time was considered to be an indication of affluence, and several motor scooters. We lived in a spacious two story townhouse in Phnom Penh. My mother had two live-in maids helping her to take care of her young children and the townhouse. It was a very nice and comfortable lifestyle for my parents. Over the years as my father continued to run a successful business, my mother found a hobby in collecting jewelry and gold. This would prove to be a lifesaving hobby for the family on our journey. Since arriving in the U.S., both my parents held blue-collar jobs until their respective retirement. They live in a small house in Skokie, Illinois.

My mother in 1969 (22 years old), standing next to our car in Phnom Penh

My older brother is the smart one in the family. He taught himself English within the first couple months of our arrival in the U.S. He was the face of the family as he was the sole translator for the rest of the family. In his first year in the United States, he sought out a better school for himself to attend in order to avoid a gang infested high school. He was my mentor and someone I looked up to growing up, especially when I struggled with school. He was an older brother role model for the rest of his siblings, frequently stressing the importance of school and hard work. Despite the fact that he started out in high school skipping elementary and middle schools, he went on to take mostly honor and advanced placement classes in high school and graduated in the top 10th percentile of his graduating class. He went on to attend, with a full scholarship, at the Northwestern University and graduated with a double major in Physics and Mathematics in the prestigious Integrated Science Program. In graduate school, he attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a top ranking University in the United States for science and engineering, and received his Master of Science (MS) and Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degrees in Physics. Since he is not an intimidating presence, it can be difficult for people to take him seriously. But they do once they appreciate intelligence and confidence. Although he did not start out this way, he is today very comfortable speaking in front of large audiences of peers and superiors alike, and can really hold a crowd. He was a great technical presenter in graduate school and his professional career, often travels with the executive teams to make technical presentations to new and existing customers. He held a post-doctoral physicist position at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the Washington D.C. area, senior engineering positions at General Electric (GE) in Milwaukee, and executive positions in several Silicon Valley high tech companies. He co-founded a start-up company (Integrated Micromachine, renamed to Touchdown Technologies) and worked as its Vice President of Engineering for almost 10 years. Today, my older brother works for Apple, Inc. and lives in his modest house in Cupertino, California, where he can walk to work at the Apple Campus in 1 Infinite Loop, with his wife and two children.

My wonderful older sister struggled the most in school. The lack of childhood development and learning gaps impacted her the most. She started school in eighth grade. She graduated from Evanston Township High School in June, 1986. After high school, she attended a community college for the first year before transferring to DePaul University where she earned a bachelor's degree in Accounting in June, 1992. She financed her college tuition with part-time jobs and student loans. She went on to work as an accountant for small to midsized companies. Today, my older sister lives with my parents in Skokie, Illinois.

My beautiful younger sister adapted well to the America culture. She had a happy childhood from the beginning. She was too young to remember about the Khmer Rouge which is a good thing. She began her education in elementary school in the third grade. She graduated from Niles North High School in Skokie, Illinois in June, 1993. She attended the University of Illinois at Chicago and graduated with a bachelor's degree in Information Science & Technology in June, 1997. She immediately began her career at CNA Financial Corporation working in their Information Technology department in downtown Chicago. She took advantage of CNA's tuition reimbursement program to obtain her Master's degree in Information Technology at DePaul University, graduating in June, 2002. She went on to work for AllState Insurance and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois. Today, my younger sister continues to work for Blue Cross Blue Shield in downtown Chicago and lives in a comfortable house in Palatine, Illinois with her husband and two children.

My younger brother is the lucky one in the family. He was born in a refugee camp in Thailand and avoided the Khmer Rouge genocide. He practically grew up in the United States starting school in the first grade just like any normal American child. Unlike his older siblings, he speaks with a perfect American accent. He was greatly influenced by our old brother at an early age as he excelled in school, graduating in the top five percent of his graduating class in high school. Similar to my older brother, he went to Northwestern University, with a full scholarship, in Evanston, Illinois. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science. He went on to work as a software engineer for various technology companies including Hewlett-Packard Company. He started a software company with funding and assistance from his two older brothers. The company built a platform with supported tools to allow web designers, illustrators, software coders, language translators, etc. to bid on projects. He merged the intellectual part of the company with a start-up company in social media called EmPeopled, where he was the company's Chief Technology Officer. He was later offered and accepted a senior staff engineering position with SpotHero, the on-demand parking marketplace. Today, my younger brother lives in a beautiful house in Northbrook, Illinois with his wife and three children.

Unlike my older brother, I struggled in school and suffered from anxiety disorders throughout my whole life. I often have recurring dreams of being chased, perhaps from what I had experienced as a child. I have terrible memories of having panic attacks from as far back as when I was taken away from my parents to the youth labor camp at the age of seven years old. My anxiety disorders persisted over the years and prevented me from reaching my full potential in school, professional careers, and socially gatherings. Now that I'm much older, Iv'e learned to control these panic attacks. I started school in seventh grade. Middle school was a different kind of struggle for me. Most, if not all, of the students came from low income families. There were different ethnic gangs in the school. One day while walking to school, I was attacked by an African American gang who thought that I was with a Vietnamese gang. This is one of the reasons my parents wanted to move to a better neighborhood in Evanston, Illinois. Needless to say, the two years in middle school did not prepare me for high school in Evanston, Illinois. I was thrust into a highly competitive high school for which I was ill prepared. High school was especially difficult as I had to take the most basic classes in all subjects including English as a second language. Even with these basic classes, I performed poorly in the first semester of my Freshman year. My father was extremely upset and disciplined me for getting bad grades. My older brother immediately assisted by tutoring and offering his encouragement. I was determined and often had to study very late at night just to stay on par with the other students. It was not until Sophomore year that I started to dramatically improve on my grades. By Junior year, I was taking some honor classes and getting A's and B's in all of my classes. This continued into Senior year and I steadily improved my grade point average to qualify for acceptance at The University of Illinois at Chicago. In college, I progressively excelled in engineering and graduated with a Bachelor's and a Master's degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. I financed my college tuition with part-time jobs and student loans. Throughout high school and college, I always had at least one part-time job. In graduate school, I was fortunate to be able to intern at Xerox Corporation in Rochester, New York in the summer of 1993, where I met my lifelong best friend, Justin. With this experience, it helped to pave the way for a position with Motorola in Schaumburg, Illinois after my graduation in May 1994. I went on to work for other multinational corporations that sent me around the world for work assignments. I was an expatriate in Brazil for three years. It was there in a small town in Northeastern Brazil that I met my wonderful and beautiful wife. My wife and I along with our two beautiful children live in a spacious house in Naperville, Illinois for the past 13 years. Naperville was voted as the second best place to live in the United States by Money Magazine in 2006. In June of 2015, my family and I relocated to Henderson, Nevada for a new career opportunity. In October of 2016, we further relocated to the Seattle area for another new career opportunity with T-Mobile USA.